1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a video analysis system of swing motion in sports of hitting a ball, such as golf and baseball.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, in golf, for a golfer to improve his or her swing motion for improving the golf skill, generally the golfer has consulted a golf teacher called an instructor about his/her swing motion and has gotten an instructor's advice on the swing motion; it has been a common practice for the golfer to take such lessens in a golf school. In the golf school, it is also a common practice that the swing of a student golfer is recorded with a general-purpose video camera and that the student golfer watches the video to enable the student to easily understand his/her weak point.
However, generally the swing motion can be recorded only from one direction with the general-purpose video camera, and it is troublesome to identify the swing motion from a recording medium and display the video of the swing motion.
To overcome this disadvantage, an apparatus has been proposed in which golfer's swing motion is recorded with two or three video cameras and is displayed on two monitors using a switcher or golfer's swing motion is recorded on video tape. However, a line, etc., cannot be drawn on the monitor screen and it is not easy to operate the video.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,857,855 and 5,947,742 have proposed a method including recording an instructor's swing motion and a student's swing motion as video images, replaying the video images on the same screen of a video display without superposing them and comparing and checking the two video images simultaneously to allow the student to understand a difference between the instructor's swing motion and the student's swing motion. However, no apparatus or technique for enabling students to easily compare the two video images has been proposed.
Further, various systems for connecting an apparatus for recording swing motion and a personal computer to analyze the golfer's swing motion have been proposed. However, those systems are premised on use of a personal computer. Therefore, there arises a problem that users are required to have a preliminary knowledge about basic software such as Windows (registered trademark), etc., to operate those systems.